Sony wants to extend digital rights management with Blockchain

The Japanese technology company Sony wants to expand its digital rights management system with the Blockchain technology. In this way, information on rights to written works is to be managed.

Sony has already come out several times as a Blockchain fan. The company already worked together with IBM on a blockchain-based education platform in the summer of last year. In April of this year, Sony even filed a patent concerning the use of blockchain technology for the administration of user rights. Now the company wants to use the security advantages of the technology to permanently manage the rights to written works.

Numerous blockchain options

The project is being developed jointly by Sony Music Entertainment Japan and Sony Global Education, as the company announced on 15 October from its website. There, Sony also explains why blockchain technology is currently the focus of the company’s development:

“Blockchains create networks in which programs and information are difficult to destroy or falsify and are well suited for the free transfer of data and rights. These characteristics give Blockchains many possible uses for a range of services, including finance, goods distribution management and sharing economy, and we expect that Blockchains will provide even more innovative services in the future”.

Sony even filed a patent concerning the use of blockchain technology

The new system will be based on an existing system for authentication, sharing and rights management of training data. However, it will also offer functions for processing rights information. Sony explained that:

“This newly developed system specialises in managing rights-related information from written works, with functions to demonstrate the date and time at which the electronic data was created, and using the properties of blockchains to record verifiable information in a manner that is difficult to forge and to identify pre-recorded work. This allows participants to share and verify when and by whom electronic data was created.”

These managed works can be electronic textbooks, music, films, VR content and books. This is intended to put a stop to legal disputes about who is the actual author of the work.